THE ROCKS HAVE EARS: This Rock Can Spy On You For Decades.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Boost Your Mind Reading Powers.

THE NEW AIDS OF THE AMERICAS: The Horror of Chagas Disease. “Like AIDS, the authors say, Chagas disease has a long incubation time and is hard or impossible to cure. Chagas infects up to eight million people in the hemisphere, mostly in Bolivia, Mexico, Colombia and Central America. But more than 300,000 of the infected live in the United States, many of them immigrants.”

FIVE OF THE WORLD’S WILDEST WATER SLIDES.

ARE CONSERVATIVES BAD AT POP CULTURE?

Plus, thoughts from Ed Driscoll.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Adam Garfinkle on Obama’s Blunders in Afghanistan and the Middle East. This must be more of that “smart diplomacy” we were promised.

BYRON YORK: Team Romney: Not gonna play repudiation game.

Well, you can’t even get Obama to repudiate Al Sharpton.

IF ONLY WE COULD CUT THE SIZE OF OUR GOVERNMENT LIKE CANADA DID. No, really.

KLAVAN ON THE CULTURE: THE BERNIE MADOFF OF INFORMATION.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Consumer Confidence Flatlines Under Obama. Well, really, what’s to be confident about?

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off on sports and outdoor clothing.

Also, today only: The Alien Anthology on Blu-Ray, $29.99. Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection.

ALEXIS GARCIA ON PJTV: Chicagoland Shakedown: Why It’s Impossible to Run A Business Without Breaking the Law.

MY LATEST FOR POPULAR MECHANICS: FIVE INVASIVE SPECIES YOU SHOULD BE EATING.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Obama Nazi death camp gaffe ‘hurt all Poles’: PM.

Poland’s prime minister said Wednesday that remarks by President Barack Obama erroneously identifying a Nazi death camp as Polish had hurt all Poles and he expected more from the US than “regret”.

“I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman — a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors,” Donald Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.

Obama on Tuesday mistakenly called a Nazi facility used to process Jews for execution as a “Polish death camp.” The White House later said the president “misspoke” and expressed “regret”.

The linguistic faux pas overshadowed his posthumous award of America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Jan Karski, a former Polish anti-Nazi underground officer who provided the Allied powers with early eyewitness accounts of the Germany’s Holocaust against Jews.

Good thing we got rid of that dumb cowboy, Bush.

ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Top GSA official returns to work after opulent Vegas conference. “More than a month after he was put on leave when a video surfaced showing him joking about the lavish spending at a taxpayer-funded General Services Administration (GSA) $823,000 conference in Las Vegas, a top official at the agency has quietly returned to his job. David Foley, deputy commissioner of the GSA’s Public Buildings Service, was one of the speakers at the convention that has come under sharp congressional scrutiny after an audit uncovered massive waste at the gathering, including a talent show, open bar and red carpet party.”

ROGER SIMON: Changing Minds In Crunch Time.

HARRY STEIN: THEY’LL CALL THIS VIDEO RACIST.

He’s got a book, too.

IT’S CAPITALISM VS. CRONY-CAPITALISM: Romney: I’ll See Your Bain And Raise You A Solyndra. “The argument: Solyndra is the best example of President Barack Obama’s stimulus at its worst, complete with a cozy donor in deep with a company that got taxpayer money only to file for bankruptcy and lay off 1,100 workers. Forget Romney’s record at the private equity firm Bain Capital — look at Obama’s public investment failure.”

ARTUR DAVIS: Why I’m Switching to Republican. “As I told a reporter last week, this is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party (and he knows that even if he can’t say it).”

UPDATE: Penn. Democratic leader defects to GOP, cites Catholic faith as reason. I think we need one more before it’s a trend, according to Kaus’s rules of punditry. . . .